Passionate about Derby and Derbyshire. This blog will mainly feature things relating to my home city such as updates to my websites, My latest videos around Derby and Derbyshire. Reviews of software technology and random stuff. Something of interest to everyone (hopefully)

Welcome to my blog, Whats this about then?

This is a place where I will be posting all sorts of things not just things relating to Derby and Derbyshire. On here you will find details of any videos I’ve made of things in Derby and also Time-lapse, stop motion animation, Tutorials etc. If I find some useful software for PC or iPhone then I will feature it here.I’m sure that there will be something of interest to someone on my many posts.Please leave comments on any posts if you like them.Don’t forget if you are new to my blog and would like to read through the previous posts then see the Blog Archive section on the left side of this page.Also there is a Search box at the top left of the page if you are looking for something but cant remember where it was. I am a trustee member of "Friends of Friar Gate bridge", aiming to get this bridge restored.

Wednesday, 30 June 2010

The current themed event has just closed on the World Wide Panorama website and the theme for this event was "Forgotten Places" so I created a 360x180 degree VR photograph looking over the top of Friar Gate Bridge in Derby. I had to go to great lengths to take this photograph as the wall is about 5 foot high and my triod is 2 foot high, I had to use an delayed infrared remote control to take the shots while trying to duck out of the way of the lens!

Here is my entry for "Forgotten Places" : This is an interactive photograph allowing you to look in all directions using the mouse.

Thursday, 24 June 2010

In February this year a choreographer from New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois in America got in touch with me asking if he could use my staggered time-shifted Derby Streets at night video footage as a backdrop to a live Dance show he was working on. I created a special version of my video for him in and used DropBox to deliver the file to him.

My timelapse footage was displayed on a cyclorama at the back of the stage, this video projector screen measures about 30 foot by 30 foot.

How stange it is to be sitting here in Derby watching video footage of a dance show in the USA that features the streets of Derby as the background. If you watch closely you will see street signs for Outter Ring Road and A52. The distance between Derby and Winnetka, Illinois, USA is 3,845 Miles

The small video clip here is from this live show of original work called "it's not the way you roll; it's the way you merge" The complete show was 85 minutes long and was performed at The Cornog Auditorium, Northfield campus of New Trier High School, Winnetka, IL. U.S.A. in April 2010 by performed by Menz Dance at New Trier High School.

It was watched by the General public about 450 students and parents.

Explanation by the Choreographer, Christopher Rutt : This dance is an original work called "it's not the way you roll; it's the way you merge" It explores the culture of automobiles -- the sense of isolation in our own moving "bubbles," the power struggles/jockeying for first place, the hypnotic trance of high speed travel, etc. The costumes are intended to evoke crash test dummies -- impersonal, unemotional, homogenous.

This dance is a "work in progress."

The performers are 17 high school boys from the Men's Dance class at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois.

Wednesday, 23 June 2010

There is a currently a special offer on at Blackbrook Zoological Park until the end of June where by you can get half price entry just by saying the code word "Dave Bain" when you pay, as stated on their Facebook page: Blackbrook Zoo Facebook page.
We visted on Friday and saved £13.42 by using this deal.

Blackbrook is home to the largest bird collection in the UK, and is internationally renowned for it’s achievements in breeding some of the world’s rarest birds.
Blackbrook is just a 15 minute drive from Ashbourne (9 miles). Or 22 miles from Derby (about 35 minute drive) up the A52 to Ashbourne then A523 to Winkhill. Look for the Brown sign on right saying "Alton Towers. Blackbrook Zoological Park"

Monday, 21 June 2010

Today 21st June 2010 is the longest day of 2010. I meant to set up my timelapse equipment to capture a full days worth of clouds in timelpase but I forgot, but you may enjoy the last video I made of clouds in time-lapse on the longest day in 2008. This video is on my Vimeo channel. Its recorded in HD, to watch it in HD you need to click on the HD is off icon then click the link that shows, fullscreen option is bottom right of the viewer....

The Longest Day, A full day of clouds in time-lapse. June 20th 2008 from Andy Savage on Vimeo.
The idea of this video was simple, I wanted to capture a whole days worth of clouds in time-lapse on the longest day of the year (20th June 2008). The sunrises in the summer are amazing but you tend to be asleep and dont get chance to see them. By means of "timed start" time-lapse I've managed to capture a wonderful sunrise which you can see at 0:23 in this video, this equates to 4.28am
I shot the sequence out of my front window in Derby, Derbyshire, UK. I did not notice the dirt on the window until after I looked at the images, oh well !

I set the software to capture and image every 14 seconds.
The first image was taken at 02:43, this is the first photo that you could start to see some daylight starting.
The last image was taken at 23:04 which was the last image with any daylight present.
The sequence is made from 5232 photographs, taken with a Canon Ixus 430.

In 2010, at 7:28 a.m. Eastern Time, the Summer Solstice began, marking the first day of summer and the longest day of the year for those in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Earth, tilted on its 23.5-degree axis, is tipped closest to the Sun during the Summer Solstice while the opposite holds true for those residing in the Southern Hemisphere, for which today is the winter solstice. Today would be the shortest day of the year for them.

The Solstice does not always occur on the same day. The variation exists because our calendar has 365 days in a year, whereas an astronomical year has 365.25 days. The discrepancy is accounted for through our implementation of the leap year system, which adds an extra day to the calendar every four years

Saturday, 19 June 2010

On friday I visited Blackbrook Zoological Farm and took lots of photographs of all the thousands of birds their with my Nikon D70.
This morning I removed the Memory Card from the camera and plugged it into the 8in1 card reader thats built into the PC and after a few seconds it showed a message "The card is not formatted do you wish to format it", Oh no whats happed to the card!!!
Its a branded SanDisk Ultra II 2Gb Compact Flash SD card and its never been a problem before so its a bit strange.
I then put the memory card back into the Nikon camera and pressed the Play button but the D70 showed "The card is not formatted" on the LCD screen. It gets worse by the second :(
I then put the memory card into my Kingston 19 in 1 Card reader and plugged the flying USB lead into my PC, I clicked on each of the removable drives that came up but every one says "insert disk"

How to recover the lost photographs from the faulty Camera memory Card.
I have tried several programs over the years that allow you to retrieve lost files from hard disks, The software I used here seems to be the best by a long way. Beats all the others by a long way.

The software is called Active File Recovery and is free to try
Click the Download button on here http://www.file-recovery.net/ and the next blue download button to get the file which is 4.47Mb and install this. It costs £23 to register the Demo version which will allow you to actually recover the files it has found.

Above is a screen grab of the software, click it to enlarge the view so you can see it.
I put my faulty memory card into the Kingston 19 in 1 Card reader and ran Active File Recovery, as you can see this software shows the 2Gb memory card as present.

Now you select this drive by clicking on it and then click the SuperScan button at the top/left of the panel.
This will show the "SuperScan Options" panel, in my particular case I only want to recover and .JPG files on the card, so in order to speed the scan process Where it says "File types to be recognized based on signatures" I selected Some and then the Select button. This shows a screen where you can pick and choose what files you want to recover.I cleared all selections and selected just JPEG Images (*.JPG)

It will now look through the memory card for absolutely every JPG file that it can find. While it scans the card it will show you how many files its found at the bottom. At this stage it is not recovering any data, its just showing you what its found.
Once the scan is complete you can view the results by expanding the results, See the SuperScan icon on the left panel.
In my case it shows as Found Files .JPG, once you click on this it will show all the files it found in the right panel. You can now select the files you want to recover, you may as well recover all of them.
Select all the files and click the Recover button, this will retrieve the images from the card and put them into a folder that you select. If its a large memory card then it may take a few minutes to get the data from it

The Results:
This software not only managed to recover every one of the photographs I took but it also recovered hundreds of photographs that I had taken with this camera from years previous!
It just goes to show that just because you delete images and format the card over and over that all the data is still on there (as long as its not been overwritten).
Some of the photographs it recovered were taken in August 2008 and were still on the card because I had not taken "so many" photographs in a single session before so it had not overwritten that area of the card yet.
So if YOU ever have lost photographs like this then try this Active File Recovery.

Thursday, 17 June 2010

Asterisk Key is a small bit of software that reveals your masked password....

This is one of those tiny utility programs that is an absolute Godsend when trying to solve certain computer problems, read on for full details of how to use it.

If you use Outlook Express as your email client and have never used anything else (i.e. Webmail) then its likely that you may not remember what your email password is. Its not a problem while everything is working well but what if your hard disk crashes or your pc security gets compromised due to some malware and you want to change your password. Looking in the email Account part of Outlook Express will only show you your password as a series of *s so unless you can guess what it was by how many characters long it is then you are stuffed. Not a problem though because the Asterisk Key utility will decode the password for you.

Here is my Scenario for why I found the Asterisk Key program so invaluable.

I had to look at someone's computer recently whose security has been compromised due to an infected webpage installing some nasty software onto the system which has made the system untrustworthy. In order to protect it I wanted to change the e-mail password in case the software had stolen it. So I disconnected the internet from the infected PC, the person could not remember what the e-mail password was and could not find where it was written down either.

I then used a different PC and logged onto the ISPs website and tried to use their "forgotten my password" option in the webmail section, this asks various security questions and then asks for you to type in a new password you want to use BUT that was not working. It just showed "An internal error has occurred please try later" which I did but but it was still not working. This left me with a bit of a conundrum, how can I get the password? After searching for quite a while for software to retrieve passwords, most of which you have to pay for I stumbled across "Asterisk Key", not only was it free but it did exactly what I needed.

So if YOU are stuck in this situation of trying to work out what the password is then this software is for you.

Click the blue Download button (top right of the webpage)
The downloaded file is only 452Kb (last software update May 2010).
It works on all Microsoft platforms 98/NT/2000/2003/XP/Vista and Windows7
The installation is pretty quick and simple requiring just a few mouse clicks.

How to use the software to get your Outlook Express pre-stored password back.
1) Run Outlook express
2) Goto the tools drop-down menu and select Accounts.
3) Click on the Mail tab at the top and select the email account you want to find the password for (you may only have one account).
4) Click on the properties button.
5) Click on Servers tab at the top.
6) In this panel, below Account name: is the Password area which will be filled in with asterisks like this ********
7) If you have not already run Asterisk Key do so by Going to the Windows Start button and across to Programs then select Passware and then Asterisk key.
8) Click on the Recover button and within a couple of seconds it will convert your masked ********'s into your actual password, as per my screenshot (note I made this email account up for this demo)
Its worth noting that when you click the Recover button it actually hunts for any masked passwords that are currently on-screen, so if you have two web pages open and Outlook Express then it will show all three passwords.
9) Now you know your password write it down somewhere safe, Quit Asterisk Key.

I notice that the company also have lots of other software for specific password recovery on certain programs such as Excel, Word, Access, Outlook etc. See their main site:

Tuesday, 15 June 2010

This blog post is about a useful software tool that I use from time to time which may be of use to panoramic photographers.

The purpose of the Pano2Movie software is simple, it will create a video file based on the recording of movement of a QTVR panorama.

So why would you want that?, well this is very useful if you want to create a DVD showcasing your VR Photography, you can record some nice pans using your portfolio of work and then create a regular DVD from the video files. The app has other uses too such as..
I will be using this software quite a bit in my next youtube video about Dovedale. I visited Dovedale to take lots and lots of 360x180 degree VR photographs but also took a few short HD video clips, but looking through the videos now I wish I had taken more video sequences, but not to worry as I have lots of VR photographs which can be made to look like live pans by using this software.

The software is fully working for 30 days so you can try before you buy.
Get Pano2Movie from here (PC and MAC versions available):

If you find the software useful then its worth investing in it, This costs around £39 (price depending on exchange rate at the time of purchase).

How to use the software

I will assume that you already have a QTVR panorama (.MOV file).
Personally I use PTGui to stitch my shots together then use Pano2VR to create my QTVRs using the Add "Quicktime" button in Pano2VR.

Anyway first download the Pano2Movie software, this is downloaded as a zip file so you will need to extract the files (right click, extract all if using XP/Vista/Windows7)

The software does not require installing, you run it by simply double clicking on the exe file. So obviously if you intend to use the software often then its worth moving the files to a safe place on your hard disk such as C:\Program Files\Pano2Movie\ then creating a shortcut icon on your desktop to to exe file.

When you run Pano2Movie you are presented with the main panel you can see in my screenshot.

Now goto the File dropdown menu and select Load QTVR. Find your .MOV file (Quicktime Panorama) and load it in. This should then show in the preview window.

Click on the Dimensions selection and pick the size you want to record to. This will be the size that the video will be recorded in. In my example here I have selected "1280 x 720 -HD" as I want to use the video on Youtube in HD mode.

Now select the Frame Rate that you want to use, this will depend on what you are going to do with the final video, in my example I will be importing the video file in Sony Vegas 9 Pro and mixing it with HD video clips that are recorded at 29.97FPS.

The next thing you need to do is have an idea of what sort of movement you are planning on capturing to video. The viewer behaves exactly the same as viewing your panorama in Quicktime player. So you can try moving around and zooming.

Once you are ready to record get the start view how you want it and click the Record button. Note that even though you have clicked the record button its not actually recording anything at alll until you move the view. If you want the final video to have a few seconds of static view before moving the scene then you can alter this using the timeline controls at the end.

Now move, Pan and zoom the view in the way you want it, all of your movements will be recorded. As you move around you will see the Duration counter increase, this is the amount of playback seconds captured.

When you have finished with panning click on the Record button again to stop recording.
On the timeline at the bottom you will see curves for P/T/F (in other words Pan, Tilt and Field of view/Zoom). You can use the many controls on this timeline to change the recorded movement to get it just how you want it.

Remember at this stage all the software has done is capture a sequence of numbers that relate to your Pan Tilt and Field of View movements, no video has been generated yet.

To see how your video will look you can click the Preview button, this will playback your movements in the window so you can get an idea of how its going to look.

If you are happy with your recording click on the Export button, the software will start the conversion process by creating a sequence of frames (.jpg or .png images.)

There is a progress bar showing the conversion progress, be aware that this can take some time if you have selected large dimensions and its a long recording.

Selecting "high quality (but slow)" in the export preferences panel increases the conversion time three fold.

Once its generated the image sequence (when the progress bar is at 50%) it then creates the video file by sequencing these frames, this part of the conversion process is faster than the first stage of conversion.

Once its completed this, it will purge the image sequence from the folder and create a video file. The default video file format will be a .MOV file but you can specify all manner of video formats including H624, just create a profile using the settings in the export panel.

Now you have your video file you can play it using Windows Media Player or Quicktime Player if you have generated a .MOV file.

When you play it back, it should replicate the exact movements that you recorded in Pano2Movie.

You can now import this video file into your video editing software for whatever purpose you need it for, for example using Roxio 2010 Pro DVD creator to make it into a DVD.

In my case I will be importing the video clip along with many other panned Pano2Movie recordings into Sony Vegas 9 Pro so I can intersperse the recorded pans with real HD video footage to make a complete HD movie for Youtube.

Tuesday, 8 June 2010

Have you ever seen Leawood Pumping station in Steam, or are a fan of Victorian engineering and TV programs about such things by Fred Dibnah and Mark Williams then I highly recommend visiting Claymills Pumping Station. You will absolutely love it and its only a few minutes drive out of Derby in our neighbouring town of Burton on Trent.

Below is a photograph I took when I visited on May Bank Holiday, its shows one of the two restored Gimson 13 ton Beam engines as seen from the top floor of C/D Engine House.

Read on for details....

The pumping station is maintained and run by a dedicated team of volunteers who give up their time and effort to restore the site for the public to see.

There is plenty for you to see when visiting...
There are two engine houses, one of them houses two fully restored Gimson steam engines that you will see operating. The other engine house has yet to be restored and when you walk around that one it makes you appreaciate just how much work as gone into restoring the other engine house.
Between the two engine houses is the boiler house, with five Lancashire boilers. These boliers date from 1937 and replaced the original boilers.
The Dynamo house which houses the oldest electrical generating equipment in the UK.
The is a Blacksmiths and a Joiners shop where you can see items being made.
There is a small Tea Rooms which includes a visitor centre and toilets.
On steam days there are vintage cars to look at and you can go one a ride on a small steam engine.
This pumping station site is Grade II listed and is described by English Heritage as “The most complete site of its kind in the UK”

Why was Claymills built:
The town of Burton upon Trent had a more acute problem of sewage disposal in the mid 1800's than any other town or city in Britain, due to the large number of breweries situated in the area. The brewing processes generated a large quantity of foul smelling, high temperature, sulphate rich effluent which also contained a lot of suspended matter. This was all discharged into local brooks and streams, which became open sewers, until eventually the crude sewage ran into the River Trent.

It was decided to build a pumping station on the site of the sedimentation tanks to pump the effluent some 2¼ miles to a sewage farm which would be built to deal with the sewage. The Burton on Trent Corporation obtained an act of Parliament in 1880 allowing them to execute these works.
The site has four Woolf compound rotatative beam pumping engines located in two seperate engine houses.

Here is a list of dates when Claymills Pumping Station is open.
June Open Days 19th & 20th June (Engines are not in steam)
July Open Days 10th & 11th, 24th & 25th July (Engines are not in steam
August Bank Holiday 29th & 30th August
Heritage Open Days 11th & 12th September (Engines are not in steam)
September 25th & 26th September
October 16th & 17th October
New Year 2nd & 3rd January 2011

So the NEXT "steaming day" at Claymills is August Bank Holiday: Sunday & Monday August 29th & 30th (10.00 am - 5.00 pm)

The Museum is also open for static viewing on Thursdays (10:00am - 3:00pm) and Saturdays (10:00am - 5:00pm) When admission is free, but donations are gratefully accepted.

How do I get there from Derby?
Claymills is just an 8 Minute drive down the A38 from Derby (The A5111 Kingsway Island). If you are using a Sat Nav then use the postcode “DE13 ODA” to get to the end of Meadow Lane.

Once there you need to drive straight over the level crossing, assuming the gates are up :) then follow the road around until you come to a left turn at which you need to drive straight on, eventually this road will take you to the car park. Once parked up you need to walk back the way you drove in and look for the Gatehouse entrance to Claymills pumping station.

See my map below for exact details, Use the link below to the map to get a large map that you can print out and take with you.

Monday, 7 June 2010

What’s the connection between the Aardman animated film Flushed Away and a Garden slug in Derby?
Read on and you will find out....

This blog post is about something that happened back in 2006 but thought it would be of interest to local readers.

In 2003 I was experimenting with time-lapse photography using my Olympus 2020 digital camera, and in August I noticed some large slugs in my garden and thought it might be interesting to do some timelapse of a garden slug moving around so I took a series of 150 photographs (until I got bored!) of this slug moving along the path in my back garden.

I took the photographs by hand every 5 to 12 seconds and very roughly followed the travel of the slug. I then made the sequence of frames into a short movie as an AVI file and uploaded it to my website.

Then out of the blue in November 2006 A company called Blue Collar Productions contacted me on behalf of Paramount Studios asking if they could use my original frames as a DVD extra on a forthcomming animated film release. It turned out that that the film in question was the DreamWorks/Aardman Animation film Flushed Away.

Flushed Away is a 2006 computer animated British film. It is a partnership between Aardman Animations of Wallace and Gromit fame, and DreamWorks Animation, and is Aardman's first completely computer-animated feature as opposed to the usual stop-motion.
The film stars the voice talents of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Andy Serkis, Bill Nighy, Ian McKellen, Shane Richie and Jean Reno. The story was by Sam Fell, Peter Lord, Dick Clement, and Ian La Frenais, and the screenplay was written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Christopher Lloyd, Joe Keenan, and William Davies.

If you own the Flushed Away DVD and want to see my Derby Slug perform these steps on the DVD
From the main menu select Special Features then select More>
then select Super Slug Stuff then click Slugcam.

How strange to think that a Slug in a garden in Derby is on this DVD film release, seen around the world.
Perhaps I should try and trace the descendents of that slug in my garden and tell it how its now famous throughout the world:). Im not sure how long a UK Slug lives for, perhaps the star himself is still alive now?

Tuesday, 1 June 2010

This Sunday, June 6th 2010 is when this years Big One takes place on Chaddesden Park in Derby. Now in its 30th year (The Big 1 was formally known as Chaddesden Carnival).

This annual festival which has taken place for many years returns to Chaddesden Park again and is expected to attract around 20,000 people.

Events and attractions include a live music stage, entertainment arenas, dance acts and more. There'll also be arts, crafts and fun workshops, charity and information stalls, food and drink stalls, Cycle Derby events.
A fun dog show, Falconry display, fun fair, climbing walls, Donkey rides, balloon modelling, face and pot painting, circus skills, Japanese kites and lots of stalls. There is even a Car Boot sale.

There will also be a variety of free arts activities to take part in, and a music stage with various bands and other artists.
Age Concern Chaddesden Park (next to the library) will be open from 11.30am to 3.30pm presenting The Feel Good Factor. A day to relax and enjoy talking to experienced therapists about enhancing your health and energy the alternative way. There will be demonstrations throughout the day and the opportunity to try out some of the therapies.

There will also be a Fair Ground on Chaddesden Park from Wednesday 2nd June to Sunday 6th June.

The Chaddesden Carnival will begin with a parade of people in fancy dress, decorated pushchairs and mobility scooters. The parade will start at 11.30am, from Sussex Circus Local Housing Office and will proceed along Max Road, Wood Road, Chaddesden Lane, Maine Drive and then onto the park.
Line the route to cheer along the people taking part!

There will be a "graffiti mural", a plywood panel which is 50ft by 8ft, fixed to the sports pavilion.
It will stay in the park afterwards and will provide a "legacy for Chaddesden Park". It will be sprayed by some of the country's leading graffiti artists.

You may remember that last years Big 1 at Chaddesden had to be cancelled twice due to heavy rain left the park waterlogged, first time it was cancelled was the 7th June so it was rearranged for August 2nd but yet again heavy rain forced the festival to be cancelled. Hopefully this year the weather will be better for them.

Here is a detailed map showing the location of Chaddesden Park and also the Parade route that will take place at 11:30 on 6th June. I'm sure that everyone already knows where Chaddesden Park is but perhaps you are visiting from outside and are not aware of its location. Parking near the park is limited so its best to try and catch a bus or walk or get someone to drop you off!